Scientology

Nathaniel Christopher 3 Comments

Okay, so I’ve been doing these stories about religion lately. Covering the Anglican schism, interviewing Russian Orthodox priests and so forth. Fuck, I even downloaded this Bible program to my computer so I could quote passages correctly. This was my favourite passage from 1 Corinthians:

4 Every man who takes part in prayer, or gives teaching as a prophet, with his head covered, puts shame on his head.

5 But every woman who does so with her head unveiled, puts shame on her head: for it is the same as if her hair was cut off.

1 Corinthians 11:4-5

I used that quote against certain Anglicans who are citing scripture to justify their theological objections to homosexuality.

“Are you going to be wearing veils in church?” I ask the church lady. “We’re not Muslim.” she responds” “But the Bible says you have to!” I counter.

of St John’s Shaughnessy Anglican Church members Cheryl Maczko-Chang and Lesley Bentley.

“You can’t just take bits and pieces of the Bible and say this is okay and this is not okay,” she responds. “You have to look at it in the bigger context and if you get all the way through the New Testament you’ll understand that Jesus actually corrected people from what they understood in the Old Testament and explained it in a way that changed some things.”

Hmm…

I was not raised in any religion but my mother was raised Anglican, as was her mother and her mother before her. When I was interviewing the Anglican ladies I mentioned this in an effort to find common ground. “Everyone seems to have been raised Anglican or have family who were,” she sighed, telling me how their numbers are dwindling.

I think all this did something to inform my fucked up dreams last night.

In my dream I was visiting my grandmother and she was telling me about her youth and how her parents raised her as a Scientologist. Both her parents were big in Scientology, she told me, and they were buried in full Scientology rites along with my grandfather.

Creepy Scientology van outside of my building.

What did that mean? Well, according to my dreams Scientologists are buried beneath the booths at this old BC restaurant chain called “Bino’s”. So, when I’d be sitting there eating my chips, waiting for my milkshake when my mother would say “Well, my father’s buried right beneath us you know.”

My grandfather and great-grandparents referenced in the dream are, in fact, buried in Ladysmith Cemetery and not beneath a crappy restaurant.

By the end of the dream everyone had given up Scientology.

When I woke up I asked my Grandmother if she was ever involved with Scientology and she said, “No, that’s too strange for me.”

I am a resident of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, who has been blogging here for nearly 25 years. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and feelings on my own online platform. From 1998 until 2017, I worked as a journalist, and I have posted most of my articles in the 'News' section of this website.

3 Comments

  1. I find Christianity worrying. So much that I have a difficult time stepping into churches or participating in anything related to it. The same goes for other religions. I couldn’t, for example, attend a christening if an Anglican family invited me. Nor would I attend a circumcision if a Jewish family asked me to come along. I just couldn’t do it. I don’t even know if I could attend a wedding in a church.

    But I am most fearful of Scientology. It is a religion that seems to serve no purpose, has such a thinly veiled and preposterously unbelievably mystique, and is couched in so much secrecy that we are led to believe that it is simply a conduit for making the top officials absurdly wealthy. No surprise, then, that they are such a litigious crowd. And that they dress like door-to-door insurance salespeople.

  2. Ok here goes.That is an interesting dream that you had about Scientoligy. It sounds as though Bino’s represents regression. When I think of Bino’s I place it int he same category as Robins donuts and Super Value. All old haunts from our child hood. Iliked Bino’s. It was charming and had really unique servers.

    Well keep up the good work…… PS Laurie made a kick ass sandwich the other day. YEAH!!

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